Customer Service Balance Sheet - More credits than debits

I have come to appreciate the application of one of the most well-defined financial concepts and its interesting nexus to the process of relationship building and particularly, in relation to customer service.

As we meet and continue to build relationships with business people, we encounter such an incredible variety of customers. We are to count it a great privilege and challenge as we interact with, maintain and build these relationships. Some of them are the easiest to maintain, but some customers demand more than their pound of flesh. This is their right of course, as they set the requirements for their own needs.

I have long since maintained that the relationships we build with colleagues and customers, and even family, can be a likened to a simple accounting ledger transaction. We all know the way it works: there is a debit column and a credit column. We have to work hard at making sure things run smoothly in relationships, that expectations are at least met if not exceeded. We have the privilege of getting to know our customers so intimately that we can even sometimes predict their next need and be ready before they make their request. This all leads to building credits.

The day does come however, where something goes wrong. The metaphorical entry of a debit into the ledger may not necessarily be caused by any one individual. It could be a colleague or a product malfunction, or maybe even a service failure. Regardless of how or who is responsible, the situation needs to be fixed, and quickly. Anyone in business knows that these instances happen, and it is merely a matter of time and not chance before you end up dealing with a customer who is not satisfied. It is how we respond to these instances that allows us to maintain the relationship and not call on too many credits to be spent in rectifying things and cancelling the debits. The key of course is to ensure at this difficult stage that we have more credits than debits.

Our recovery from a service or product failure is highly dependent on how many credits we have built up over the length of the relationship and of course how we attend to the matter and solve it. Keep building credits in your relationships as one never knows when you will need them.